Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The last weeks have been a bit crazy! After two long and more or less successful experimental sessions with lots of data to analyze, there was not much time to settle back in the office. One of our collaborators from the experimental session stayed a few days longer and we discussed and pre-processed our data - and had a few lunches/dinners/beers. Directly after that our group got "swamped" with short term exchange students, who all need the same pieces of equipment to do their projects. And of course they all just have limited time, whereof a lot is already taken by safety instructions and paperwork. All their projects are related to what I'm doing, so I'm their main contact person. Which is sort of great, because they are in very different stages of their studies and its great to see them progress. But of course it takes up a lot of time.

At the end of the week I'll leave for a combined conference/vacation trip and until then there is still a bit of data analysis on my table and ... yeah .... the conference talk needs to be prepared and I still didn't come up with a great way to present my data. After the conference there may or may not be my first lecture to be given - which is as well not amazingly prepared yet. I mean, the first lecture - I refuse to think about the rest of it for now. Because maybe the number of students enrolled is too low and then the whole course is skipped - so my motivation to prepare a lot is quite low.

Sounds all like bad time management, I guess. But until the deadline/departure of the plane everything will be organized, slides will be prepared, I'll know if the lecture will take place and all the exchange students will have a plan for the time I'm not there and they will do great stuff and present exciting results when I'm back!

about me

After doing my undergrad studies here and there and enjoying my time as a PhD student somewhere else, I'm now a postdoctoral fellow at one of the big Australian universities. My research field belongs to science or engineering - depending on whom you ask.